If a man and a woman get equally sloshed and have sex while drunk, are they mutually responsible? Society seems to put the burden of restraint on the man, it seems, because while I hear many cases of women being taken advantage of while drunk and later reporting it as a rape, I never hear the same situation reversed.
Wouldn’t both parties be equally responsible for whatever happens? I would think in that circumstance, whatever the woman accuses the man did is equally guilty of the same thing.
I don’t have a cite for this, but when I was in college exactly that happened. A man and a woman both got trashed, woke up in bed together, and the woman accused him of rape. I don’t know if he was convicted, though.
Societal logic holds that men always want sex, and women don’t. That’s the double standard. The fact that it is often true doesn’t seem to help the case, but I still feel sorry for the guy.
Depending upon the idiosyncratic specifics of each situation, it would seems so in general.
If someone, male or female engages in criminal activity while intoxicated they are not held any less accountable for their actions merely because they intoxicated themselves beforehand. When one has an automobile accident one can be held to even greater accountability if one has partaken of intoxicants in a risky situation.
However, the intent seems to be to censure plying a woman with alcohol. Which, depending upon the idiosyncratic specifics of each situation, seems wrong as a rule.
If the event was the result of design of only one of the parties involved and involved a devised ploy, it would be wrong. Buying a second bottle of wine with dinner shouldn’t pass muster. But ordering deceptively strong drinks for your date (or providing unexpectedly strong intoxicants that are willingly consumed) would qualify.
Often, when a woman plies a man with alcohol his friends just make fun of him for getting drunk and fucking her.
In theory a rape charge could happen though I suppose.
No, not whatever.
It’s hard to say w/o more specific texts. There certainly seems to be the potential for sexist applications of the idea.
SimonX, I’m confused, how is it that both parties are not responsible? If both people are drinking, neither is in a position to consent to sex. Either they are both responsible, or neither of them are. Neither one of them can legally consent to having sex- so if they both willingly engage in sex at the time, how is one of them any more responsible than the other?
I guess it occurred to somebody that two people can’t simultaneously rape each other. I think Simon’s explanation that even in situations that could qualify as rape if charges were pressed, men are less likely to press charges.
The answer of course is “depending on whether the DA thinks it will help him get elected senator and whether the jury buys it.”
If you get trashed and you have sex with a fellow trashee you wouldn’t have wanted to otherwise, you weren’t raped. You did something stupid while you were drunk. And I for one deny the idea that having stupid drunken sex is such a horrific thing, it’s certainly a lot better than some other things you can do while drunk. People need to stop having these hystrionic reactions to things just because a PSA told them to. If you sleep with the wrong person, shrug it off and don’t sleep with them again.
You absolutly ARE capable consent when drunk and legally accountable. Rape occurs when the victim is unable to resist (cite for CA at least). This may occur if the victim is passed out or in a coplete drunken stupor. This may also occur if the victim is restrained, threatened with force or drugged (including being given alcohol without knowing it). But a woman is legally and morally accountable for their actions in a state of garden-variety drunkeness.
It is a common belief that women cannot consent to sex under the influence, but this is not true. It is a deameaning trope because it treats women like children who are unable to make meaningful choices about their lives and it serves the purpose of diluting the status of women that actually have been raped. Women do not have the power to get people thrown in jail just for having sex with them. Even when it does occur, rape is very hard to prove and in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty only a tiny percentage of actual rapists see any jailtime. Only your reputation is at risk in the event of a drunken fling.
This is a MYTH and it is a myth with a harmful agenda. Thats what ignorance fightin’ is about.
Well I’m about to ask what I assume is a dumb question…
Generally, I thought that if a man was drunk to the point where he wouldn’t be able to consent, he would be able to achieve and maintain an erection.
Obviously this wouldn’t account for rape with an object, but it would seem to rule out the traditional penis in vagina thrusting that most people associate with sex?
Is this not the case? Is the ol’ marshmellow in a coin-slot analogy inaccurate? (Neither me nor my SO drink in any real appreciable way, so I can’t really test this.)
I have to admit that I am somewhat curious about this myself. I’m not much of a drinker, and have never gotten drunk to the point that I don’t have control of myself or have failed to remember significant (or insignificant) parts of an evening.
I have had friends who have told me that some evenings, they “don’t even remember how they got home” and other instances where they have completely forgotten whole blocks of time.
So, in the scenario where a man and woman wake up together, obviously having had intercourse; and there were no witnesses to the event… how would the woman know she had been passed out before intercourse occurred. Couldn’t she just not remember?
Quite likely. But it’s a common misconception that during a blackout you were more or less unconscious. Many if not most people don’t understand that you stop recording memory long before you succumb to a complete stupor.
How does this have a harmful agenda. Please clarify or cite.
How is it harmful that people don’t take chances when they are drunk and another person is drunk because of concerns about getting in potential trouble with the law, no matter how remote it might be?
This article refutes the ‘2%’ false report fallacy that some people had previously embraced, by saying that rape is no more falsely reported than any other crime. Some evidence suggests this is not true, and that in some places 15-20 percent of rape accusations are in fact false.
The point is, there is some inherent risk involved under such circumstances.
